My Day with Jesus

I got hoodwinked into attending church on Saturday (Feb. 17).

I’ve been working with an Egyptian guy, John, on stories over the past two weeks. John came to Beirut from Cairo to cover the summer war for an Egyptian newspaper. He’s stayed on to freelance and work teaching Arabic to American students via the Internet videophone program Skype.

(Nothing we’ve written was purchased, and the political nature of our stories make them useless in the States where papers depend on wire services for their news. My niche, which I’m doggedly pursuing, will be feature articles.)

We were off to pick up batteries, do an interview, and use the Internet. On the walk to the bus, John mentioned wanting to go to mass. Since we’d already left the house, I wouldn’t really know where to meet him if we split ways and I’m always up for something new, I attended mass.

While hosted at the Jesuit residence near a street known for bars and clubs (those jumpin’ Jesuits couldn’t pass up a good time, I presumed), the mass was in the Maronite rite. And in Arabic.

We arrived on the 10th floor of the residence building to find no one. John took me to a room with an altar and an amazing view of downtown (tent city). Empty chairs surrounded the altar in a half-circle. John went off to find someone, and I stared out the window, grateful to have dodged that bullet.

Soon, however, a priest showed up. He rang a bell, introduced himself, and three other guys joined us for mass. Fr. Zeki handed me a bible and pointed me in the direction of the day’s two readings. I’m not really sure if I read them at the correct time. While Fr. Zeki gave me a few English asides, I was pretty much lost during the service.

A majority of the mass, Fr. Zeki sat one chair away from me, directly across from the altar. He stood behind it for the communion part. There was a lot more moving the host around in cross-shapes than I remember from Catholic services. We had a white wine that was sweet and very tasty. I normally don’t like white wine, and I seriously considered asking what it was after the service. I decided against it.

There were about three or four times when we bowed our heads in silent prayer. (I wondered if I should pretend to pray or just think about whatever I wanted. Everyone seemed so sincerely involved in the service I felt a little guilty sitting there thinking about nothing. Ultimately, I just thought about nothing. Who would I pray to, and what would I say?)

In one of his asides, Fr. Zeki told me two ways the Maronite rite differs from the Latin rite.

(To tell me, however, he started with, “You know the Latin rite?” I heard, “You know Latin, right?” assuming he mistranslated a bit and added an extra “the” to his question. “No, I never had to learn it,” I said, making an ass of myself.)

Apparently the “peace-be-with-you” part is earlier (I didn’t notice) as well as the part where we call the Holy Spirit (I didn’t even know that was part of the Roman Catholic mass).

With that behind us, we were off. Stop number three was the house of some of John’s Lebanese Christian friends. They were great guys. One, whose name I can’t recall, is a geography teacher. His brother, Farid, is in college for marketing.

Farid’s English is worse than his brother’s. (He actually speaks very well, but at first he spoke almost only in Arabic, leading me to think he didn’t speak English at all.)

We were looking at an atlas, talking about Lebanon while John was on the phone and Farid studied at a table a few feet away. He briefly explained some of the history of Christians in Lebanon, pointing out they had nothing to do with the Crusades but were still blamed for them by their countrymen.

He complained that the Muslims had foreign countries willing to enter Lebanon to save them. The Christians, however, had no one. (Which isn’t really true, but truth isn’t necessarily a gold standard in Lebanon.)

“Jesus,” Farid exclaimed with an almost child-like enthusiasm. “We have Jesus. Jesus is our rock.” We all laughed.

“Are you Catholic?” Farid’s brother asked me. I said yes. We continued looking at the atlas, and Farid walked up, handing me a picture cut from a magazine of Pope John Paul II.